A Luxury Brand in Blue and Gold: The Polite Society

Lu Hickman Creative Co. won a 2018 American Graphic Design Award, presented by GDUSA, for the brand identity we created for The Polite Society, an etiquette and manners school in Chicago founded by Jessica Lieffring. This is the foundation the entire brand is built on, an identity designed not just to look beautiful, but to give The Polite Society room to grow.

The goal was to attract a specific clientele, so the identity had to look the part. The Polite Society teaches polish and confidence, and the brand needed to feel like the world its clients aspire to join. We built it to read as luxurious from the very first touch, the kind of identity that signals quality before a single word is read.

That feeling lives in the details. The palette centers on a deep blue paired with gold foil, carried across a full suite of stationery and printed by one of the best letterpress printers in the country. The result is tactile and unmistakably premium, with rich paper texture, a crisp impression, and foil that catches the light. The logotype balances all that structure with flowing, curved ligatures, so the mark reads as authoritative and graceful at once. That tension, the structured and the elegant held together, is what gives the brand its strength and lets it feel welcoming rather than stiff.

Then we built it to grow. We extended the core palette with softer tones of pale pink and mint, colors made for social media and for warmth, and carried them with care into the custom illustrations we commissioned for the second phase, the website and social presence. That discipline is what lets one identity scale cleanly from a letterpressed business card to a mobile screen without ever losing itself. It is also what set up the next win.

This is what we mean when we say branding is an investment. A logo is a starting point. A system, built with intention and room to expand, is what keeps returning value, holding together and looking inevitable across every place a customer meets it. The Polite Society identity is designed to do exactly that, and two awards in two years are the proof.

FAQ

What award did Lu Hickman Creative Co. win?

A 2018 American Graphic Design Award, presented by GDUSA.

What was the project?

The brand identity for The Polite Society, including the logo, color palette, and letterpress stationery system.

Who was the client?

The Polite Society, an etiquette and manners school in Chicago, founded by Jessica Lieffring.

What defines the identity?

A deep blue paired with gold foil, luxury letterpress stationery, a custom logotype with curved ligatures, and a palette extended with pale pink and mint for digital and social use.

Did this lead to more work?

Yes. The identity became the foundation for the mobile-first website that won a 2019 American Web Design Award.

Lu Hickman Creative Co. is a certified MBE/WBE boutique design and marketing agency headquartered in Houston, TX, with presence in Chicago and São Paulo, serving clients across the United States. The firm holds WBE, MBE, Hire Houston First (HHF), HUB, and SBE designations and has earned six GDUSA awards in addition to two 2025 HBMA Lantern Awards.

Services include brand identity and guidelines, capabilities brochures and sales materials, proposals and RFP design, interactive presentations, and full marketing collateral systems, all built for firms that compete in technical industries.

luhickman.com